Clips December 18, 2002

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips December 18, 2002

ARTICLES

FTC Plans Registry To Block Sales Calls
DMCA critics say reform still needed
Report: China Detains Online Publisher
Some Companies Will Release Customer Records on Request
E-Gov Act signed into law
Homeland e-learning group created
Government IT personnel moves
TSA issues RFI on biometrics products
Defense CIO approves next step in NMCI
Evans lays out CIO Council's goals
Federal agencies slip slightly on customer satisfaction survey
Bush Promotes Anti-Missile System
Tech Sniffs Employee Offenders  [Privacy]
China Makes It Easier to Buy a .cn Web Site Name
Malaysia Arrests Three Over Terror Rumors on Net
Web surfers vulnerable to Flash flaw
Pentagon announces data project
Student gets A for hacking school computer
New EU guidelines for e-health websites
Web consortium releases accessibility standards
FCC Adopts Measure to Maintain Universal Service Fund
Patent Office starts testing paperless processing system


***************************
Washington Post
FTC Plans Registry To Block Sales Calls
Telemarketers Vow To Fight Proposal
By Caroline E. Mayer
Wednesday, December 18, 2002; Page E01

The Federal Trade Commission is scheduled to announce today its 
long-awaited plan to curb unwanted telephone solicitations: a national 
do-not-call registry that consumers can easily join, by dialing a toll-free 
number from their home telephone and then punching in some numbers or by 
signing up through the Internet.

FTC officials expect 60 million Americans to register when the list becomes 
operational -- which won't be for at least several more months. It still 
faces logistical and legal hurdles, including a possible lawsuit by the 
telemarketing industry, which makes more than 100 million calls a day.

If and when the list is up and running, telemarketers would have to scour 
it every three months and would be barred for five years from calling the 
consumers who signed up. Consumers would then have to renew their 
registration. If they get called anyway, those on the list can call another 
toll-free number to complain. The FTC would then investigate and could fine 
telemarketers up to $11,000 for each banned call.

The agency will ask Congress for permission to collect an estimated $16 
million in fees from telemarketers to pay for the do-not-call registry -- 
more than three times the initial $5 million estimate officials gave in 
January when they proposed it. Sources who have been briefed on the rule 
said the FTC then plans to charge an annual fee, perhaps as much as $8,000 
for a large telemarketing operator, significantly higher than originally 
estimated.

The agency doesn't expect consumers to notice the impact of the new 
registry until next summer at the earliest, after the agency seeks 
temporary funding from Congress to set up the call list and get it running.

The Direct Marketing Association said yesterday, even before the rule was 
announced, that it believes the FTC action is "unlawful in a number of 
respects" and plans to "pursue all legal and equitable courses of action to 
protect the American teleservices industry." Another industry group, the 
American Teleservices Association, said that consumers buy more than $275 
billion in goods and services annually from telemarketers -- about 4 
percent of all consumer sales.

If the registry survives a court challenge, consumers shouldn't expect a 
completely call-free dinner hour. That's because the call list, at least 
initially, will still allow many unsolicited calls to get through, 
including those from insurance companies, banks and telecommunications 
firms, because these industries are not regulated by the FTC.

But agency officials said they hope the Federal Communications Commission 
will soon revise its telemarketing rules to make these industries comply. 
In September, the FCC signaled it was considering such a change after 
receiving an increasing number of complaints about telemarketers.

Regardless of that possible action, the FTC rules would still permit 
unsolicited calls from charities and politicians, who don't fall under the 
government's definition of telemarketers.

The agency would also permit firms that have an "existing business 
relationship" with a consumer to continue to call -- for 18 months after a 
consumer makes a purchase, or for three months after an inquiry about a 
product or service.

A large conglomerate, such as AOL Time Warner Inc., where subsidiaries have 
different names and services, would not be able to claim that an existing 
relationship in one part of the company allows a telemarketing call from an 
another part of the firm. Thus, a person with a subscription to Time 
magazine could get calls from Time and Time-Life Books but not from America 
Online Inc., sources said.

It's unclear how the FTC rule would mesh with the 28 states that have 
already enacted laws setting up their own state do-not-call registries. For 
now, state and federal officials say consumers would have to call both the 
state and federal lists to make sure interstate and intrastate 
solicitations are blocked. Eventually FTC officials said they hoped a 
single call to the federal list would cover all calls. The federal agency 
is also counting on state law enforcement officials to help police its 
do-not-call rules.

There are no do-not-call registries in Maryland, Virginia or the District. 
But officials from some other states with existing lists don't like the 
federal rule. "We're concerned about confusion, we're concerned about 
preemption and we're concerned about loopholes," said Jeremiah W. "Jay" 
Nixon, attorney general of Missouri, where 1.1 million phone lines have 
been registered on the state's do-not-call list, which was started in July 
2001.

After its first nine months of operation, the Missouri registry was 
generating 50 complaints a day, and Nixon had assigned 38 of his 200 
lawyers to investigate them. The state brought 62 legal actions against 
alleged violators during that period.

As part of the rule, the FTC will also order telemarketers, within a year, 
to start transmitting caller-ID information when they call, so consumers 
with caller ID -- about half the country's phone users -- would be able to 
know who is calling. Telemarketers would also be restricted in their use of 
automated dialers, the use of computers to call homes in advance of having 
a salesperson available to talk -- leading to "dead air" at the other end 
of the phone when you pick it up.
********************************
CNET
DMCA critics say reform still needed
By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
December 17, 2002, 6:35 PM PT

WASHINGTON--A congressman who is trying to defang a controversial copyright 
law said Tuesday that he's not deterred by an acquittal in the first 
criminal prosecution brought under it.
Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., who in October proposed rescinding part of the 
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), said the law remains a problem 
even though a jury ruled a software maker ElcomSoft was not guilty of 
willfully violating it.

"As far as the bill going forward is concerned, the need for the 
legislation is as great as ever," Boucher said in an interview. "While this 
jury reached a commendable decision, another jury in a future case that 
involves similar facts could well convict. The law clearly contemplates 
conviction in circumstances where no infringement occurs but the technology 
facilitates bypassing a technological protection measure."


By repealing key portions of the DMCA, Boucher's bill would have prevented 
the Justice Department from prosecuting ElcomSoft, a Russian company that 
sold a program to remove the copy protection from Adobe's e-books. If the 
proposed Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act, co-sponsored by John 
Doolittle, R-Calif., were to become law, ElcomSoft's Advanced eBook 
Processor would become legal to sell.

Boucher said he will re-introduce his bill without any changes when the 
108th Congress begins in January. "The result of such a law remaining on 
the books is that companies will be more reluctant to introduce new 
technology that has lawful uses such as facilitating the exercise of fair 
use rights, but which also circumvents technological protection measures 
and could facilitate copyright infringement," Boucher said. "And so to 
encourage the introduction of useful technologies, the legislation is 
needed and it will go forward."

Currently the DMCA says that no one may sell or distribute any product that 
"is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a 
technological measure." Some limited exceptions apply to librarians, 
police, people conducting reverse engineering, and encryption researchers.

But when Linux programmers wrote the DeCSS utility to play DVDs on their 
computers, eight movie studios sued and a federal judge and an appeals 
court ruled the program violated the DMCA. Ed Felten, a Princeton 
University computer scientist, and his co-authors were also threatened with 
legal action by the music industry if they published a paper describing 
flaws in a digital watermark system.

The Business Software Alliance, a trade association for large software 
makers such as Microsoft and Adobe, said it was happy the prosecution was 
brought.

"Although the jury decided the DMCA had not in this case been violated, we 
are glad that prosecutors do believe that such cases have an appropriate 
place in our criminal justice system," the group said in a statement. "The 
DMCA has clear criminal penalties that can and should be imposed in cases 
of direct or attempted theft of software and other digital content."

Under federal law, people who violate the DMCA "willfully and for purposes 
of commercial advantage or private financial gain" can be fined up to 
$500,000 and imprisoned for up to five years for the first offense.

Jonathan Band, a partner at Morrison and Foerster who worked to limit the 
scope of the DMCA when Congress was debating it, said the law is still as 
worrisome as it ever was.

"If Adobe had sued ElcomSoft, ElcomSoft would not have had a lot of 
defenses," Band said. "All Adobe would have had to prove was that they 
circumvented a technical protection measure. But because there was a 
criminal proceeding, there was a higher standard. You had to show not just 
a violation but a willful violation. And you had to show that beyond a 
reasonable doubt, not just a preponderance of the evidence. That makes it 
much more difficult to prevail."

Band said he applauded the Boucher-Doolittle bill. "This (verdict) does not 
have the slightest impact at all on civil liability under the DMCA," Band 
said. "The only reason the case came out the way it did was because it was 
a criminal case with the standard of willful violation."

The Boucher-Doolittle bill would make three changes to the DMCA, all 
designed to permit people to bypass copy-protection schemes for legitimate 
purposes:

? An exemption would be created saying anyone who "is acting solely in 
furtherance of scientific research into technological protection measures" 
would be able to distribute his or her code. That would permit Felten and 
other researchers--such as a programmer being represented by the American 
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in a current lawsuit--to publish their work 
without the threat of lawsuits.

? Bypassing technological protections would be permissible if done for 
legitimate "fair-use" purposes. The bill says it would not be a violation 
of federal law to "circumvent a technological measure"--as long as it does 
not lead to "an infringement of the copyright in the work."

? Creating a utility like DeCSS.exe might become legal. The bill says it 
would be legal to "manufacture, distribute, or make noninfringing use of a 
hardware or software product capable of enabling significant noninfringing 
use of a copyrighted work."
********************************
CNET
Sun accuser suffers setback


By Ed Frauenheim
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
December 17, 2002, 7:24 PM PT


SAN FRANCISCO--The judge in a Labor Department case involving Sun 
Microsystems threw out much of the evidence submitted by a former employee 
who claims Sun illegally laid off U.S. citizens while retaining foreigners 
working under temporary, H1-B visas.
In an administrative law hearing stemming from ex-employee Guy Santiglia's 
appeal of an earlier ruling by the Labor Department, Judge Jennifer Gee 
found Tuesday that a variety of documents submitted by Santiglia were not 
admissible. Gee cited various reasons, including a lack of authentication.

In last October's ruling involving Santiglia's accusation that Sun violated 
regulations of the H-1B guest worker program, the department concluded that 
the company committed only minor mistakes, failing in three instances to 
properly post notice of its application for the right to hire H-1B workers.


Santiglia, a system administrator laid off by Sun in November of 2001, has 
accused the company of violations including harming the working conditions 
of U.S. employees with guest workers, failing to properly post notices in 
the workplace, and failing to provide proper access to public documents.

Sun rejects Santiglia's charges as meritless. Other federal agencies, such 
as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of 
Justice, have dismissed claims against Sun by Santiglia.

The H-1B visa program lets skilled foreign workers work in the United 
States for up to six years. Santiglia's complaint focuses on a part of the 
process of securing an H-1B visa. That part of the process, called the 
labor condition application, or LCA, requires employers to describe the 
salary that will be paid to a given guest worker and to testify that use of 
the H-1B won't harm working conditions of a U.S. employee in a comparable 
work roll. Employers don't have to hire the H-1B worker referred to on an 
LCA, but they must provide notice of the LCA to their existing employees.

To support his appeal of the Labor Department ruling, Santiglia presented 
the court with print outs of e-mails from former Sun workers saying they 
did not see workplace notices of LCAs. Santiglia also offered an e-mail 
from a former Sun worker who said Sun managers told him H-1Bs were 
preferable as new hires because "most local candidates wanted too much money."

When Sun's attorney objected to the e-mails, Judge Gee excluded them. She 
said Santiglia hadn't proved they were authentic.

"Where there's an objection, I've got to get it authenticated," Gee said.

Gee also threw out data Santiglia said he received from the Labor 
Department about Sun's LCAs. She said columns on the data weren't clearly 
labeled and it wasn't authenticated.

The hearing came to a close Tuesday. Gee has 60 days to issue a ruling on 
Santiglia's appeal.

Santiglia was glad to have his day in court. But he said he felt the 
"scales are tipped against you" if you're an individual opposing a 
corporation.

"I'm not so hopeful," Santiglia said.
**********************************
Government Computer News
OPM analyzes Homeland Security's work force
By Jason Miller

The Office of Personnel Management today is analyzing work force data for 
the Homeland Security Department on four job classifications to identify 
the new department's needs.

OPM will use a version of an Army work force analysis tool to evaluate the 
agencies that will be rolled into the new department. The tool will 
determine how many criminal investigators, procurement specialists, 
attorneys and computer engineers work in the component agencies and how 
many the new department will need, said Norm Enger, OPM e-government 
project director.

OPM modified the Army's Workforce Analysis Support System and Civilian 
Forecasting System to be used with the Enterprise Human Resources 
Integration e-government project. EHRI is one of five Quicksilver 
e-government initiatives OPM is directing.

"We want to demonstrate the tool's power to our partners," Enger said. "We 
will use existing data to from the Central Personnel Data File and forecast 
and analyze the four occupational series critical to the new Department of 
Homeland Security." Enger said he also plans to use data mining on the 
federal information database to support the needs of the new department.

Enger said the tools will be available to all agencies in January.
********************************
Associated Press
Report: China Detains Online Publisher
By JOE McDONALD, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING - The publisher of an online Chinese pro-democracy journal has been 
detained by police, adding to a growing number of people picked up in a 
crackdown on Internet dissent, a human rights group said Wednesday.


Li Yibin was secretly detained about a month ago in Beijing, New York-based 
Human Rights in China said in a written statement. It said other details of 
his case weren't known.


A spokesman for Beijing's police, Li Wei, said he couldn't confirm whether 
anyone by that name had been detained and didn't have any other information.


Li Yibin, believed to be 28, published the online journal "Democracy and 
Freedom," Human Rights in China said. It said he had a degree in computer 
science and worked in Beijing.


Li was detained after Liu Di, a female Beijing college student who was 
picked up on Nov. 7 for Internet activism, Human Rights in China said. It 
said Liu's university confirmed to the group that she had been formally 
arrested.


Another human rights group, Amnesty International, said last month that the 
communist government has detained at least 33 people in a crackdown on 
online dissent.


China encourages Internet use for business and education, and has tens of 
millions of Web surfers, but goes to great lengths to stamp out online 
political activity.


Censors monitor online chat rooms for unwanted comments, and filters block 
Web surfers from seeing sites run by foreign news organizations, human 
rights groups and Chinese activists abroad.


Both Amnesty and Human Rights in China appealed to a U.S. delegation that 
was in Beijing this week for human rights talks to press for their release.


"Liu Di, Li Yibin and others have done nothing more than post their views, 
but the government's current obsession with the Internet has subjected them 
to harsh persecution," Human Rights in China said.

The head of the U.S. delegation, Assistant Secretary of State Lorne Craner, 
said Tuesday that it had raised cases of several prisoners but wouldn't say 
how Chinese officials responded. China hasn't released any details of the 
talks.


Last year, a former policeman in western China was sentenced to 11 years in 
prison for downloading materials from pro-democracy Web sites based abroad. 
Others also have been imprisoned for posting or downloading online 
political materials.
*******************************
New York Times
December 18, 2002
Some Companies Will Release Customer Records on Request
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Nearly a quarter of the corporate security officers in a survey to be 
released today said they would supply information about customers to law 
enforcement officials and government agencies without a court order. If an 
investigation concerned national security, the figure jumps to 41 percent.

"If you're a customer in somebody's database, you cannot be completely 
confident that the information you've provided  whatever the business might 
be  is not going to be shared with law enforcement agencies in the course 
of their investigations," said Lew McCreary, the editor of CSO magazine, 
which conducted the survey.

In the survey of 797 chief security officers (a title commonly abbreviated 
as C.S.O.) 43 percent said they would require a court order before 
providing information on customers, employees or partner organizations.

The security officers who took part in the survey work in financial, 
retail, health care and many other fields, and the companies they work for 
range in size from fewer than 500 employees to more than 30,000.

The survey questions do not give a sense of what information might be 
shared or under what circumstances. The results will provide further fuel 
for the controversy surrounding issues of privacy and national security 
since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But growing concerns about government encroachments on privacy and civil 
liberties have not taken into account the degree to which people hand over 
information willingly, said Mark Rasch, a former federal prosecutor who now 
works for Solutionary, a computer security company.

"We've been so worried about giving them extra power and authority without 
worrying about what they can do with no extra power and no extra authority, 
just by asking," Mr. Rasch said.

Legal experts were divided on the implications of the survey. "These 
companies have obligations to their customers and their clients to protect 
the confidentiality of records in their possession," said Marc Rotenberg, 
executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a policy 
and advocacy group in Washington. "In disclosing this information to police 
officers and agencies and others, they might actually be breaching legal 
obligations."

The results should not be surprising to people who understand the corporate 
security field, said Mr. McCreary, the magazine editor. "A great many 
C.S.O.'s come from a law enforcement background," he said.

Some of the best-known Web companies, like eBay and Amazon, have privacy 
policies that allow them to furnish information without a search warrant or 
subpoena. An eBay spokesman, Chris Donlay, said that "we let people know 
right up front that we do provide information to law enforcement" as part 
of antifraud policies. The company will provide the kind of information 
that is available to its users, like an e-mail address and profile, without 
a subpoena, but generally requires one before providing other information. 
If a user does not want his information provided to law enforcement agents, 
Mr. Donlay said, "we probably don't want them on our site."

Patty Smith, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said that requests from law 
enforcement were not uncommon but that the company would resist if it 
believed the requests violated customer rights. "Even if they have a valid 
subpoena, we don't necessarily hand it over," Ms. Smith said. "Our first 
concern is the privacy interest of our customers."

Orin S. Kerr, an associate professor at George Washington University Law 
School and a former Justice Department lawyer, said that Sept. 11 had 
changed public attitudes. Before the attacks, some Internet companies would 
fight search warrants. Now, Mr. Kerr said, there is "a renewed appreciation 
for what the F.B.I. is trying to do."

"If it's a terrorism case, with fear of weapons of mass destruction, it's 
pretty good that the information is disclosed," he said. "If it's a small 
criminal case with no connection to terrorism, maybe it's not so good."
**********************************
Federal Computer Week
E-Gov Act signed into law
BY Judi Hasson
Dec. 17, 2002

President Bush signed the E-Government Act of 2002 today, creating a law 
that will make it easier to get more government information and services 
online.

The new law will bring government fully into the electronic age, "giving 
taxpayers the same round-the-clock access to government that they have come 
to expect from the private sector," according to Sen. Joe Lieberman 
(D-Conn.), co-author of the legislation.

The law establishes an Office of Electronic Government, headed by an 
administrator appointed by the president. It authorizes $345 million over 
four years for interagency government projects and establishes an online 
directory of federal Web sites.

"The idea behind this law is for the federal government to take full 
advantage of the Internet and other information technologies to improve its 
efficiency and to secure its electronic information," Lieberman said.

Paul Brubaker, an architect of the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 that targeted 
federal IT management and cost overruns, said the new law is a beginning, 
but it is not a "panacea" for e-government.

"It's going to take a while," said Brubaker, who has started his own 
consulting company.

The measure also mandates a number of new directives, requiring regulatory 
agencies to conduct administrative rulemaking on the Internet and federal 
courts to post judicial opinions and other information online.

It also makes it easier for state and local governments to use federal 
contracting vehicles, and it backs share-in-savings contracts in which the 
government pays contractors out of savings from an efficient project.

The e-government law "reflects an invigorated commitment to applying 
information technology to improve service delivery, operations and 
information security," said Dave Marin, spokesman for Rep. Tom Davis, 
(R-Va.) one of the bill's authors.

"Rep. Davis intends to oversee implementation of this legislation to make 
sure agencies are indeed committed to e-government and to make sure we 
really are confronting the challenges of making the transition to 
e-government meaningful and valuable," Marin said.
*****************************
Federal Computer Week
Homeland e-learning group created
BY Diane Frank
Dec. 11, 2002

The Office of Homeland Security has created a new working group to focus 
entirely on developing common e-learning tools and courses for the new 
Homeland Security Department.

The group is intended to make sure that internal and external training are 
coordinated across the department, Lee Holcomb, director of infostructure 
for the Office of Homeland Security, said Dec. 10.

"E-learning, in my opinion, will be an important part of the new 
department," he said, speaking at the E-Gov Homeland Security conference, 
sponsored by FCW Media Group, in Washington, D.C.

Calls went out last week to all the organizations that are moving into 
Homeland Security asking for training officials to get involved in the 
working group, Holcomb said.

Internal employees will be trained, and the department also will lead 
training development for state and local agencies and other first responders.

Holcomb, the former chief information officer at NASA, said that the best 
approach likely will be to build on training that already exists, much the 
way NASA did with the computer-based information security training 
developed by the Defense Information Systems Agency.
******************************
Federal Computer Week
Roster Change
Government IT personnel moves
Dec. 17, 2002.
Email this to a friend.

Jim Flyzik announced Dec. 11 that he is joining two leading information 
technology consultants to start a firm that will advise companies on doing 
business with government.

Immediately following his retirement from government Dec. 17, Flyzik will 
begin to work with Robert Guerra and Phil Kiviat to form Guerra, Kiviat & 
Flyzik. Guerra has run Robert J. Guerra & Associates for eight years, and 
Kiviat has run the consulting firm the Kiviat Group for three years.

Flyzik most recently was the lead IT adviser in the Office of Homeland 
Security and previously was chief information officer for the Treasury 
Department.

For more, see "Flyzik forming consulting firm."

***

Fernando Burbano, former chief information officer at the State Department, 
has taken on a new role within the department as a senior adviser on 
homeland security.

Earlier this month, Burbano assumed his new role in the deputy secretary's 
homeland security office within the State Department. It is a new office, 
Burbano said, created to work on and coordinate homeland security issues 
within the office and to serve as a liaison with new Homeland Security 
Department.

No replacement for Burbano has been named, but in the meantime Bruce 
Morrison, deputy CIO for operations, is acting CIO.

For more, see "Burbano takes on homeland job."

***

Raymond Wells has been named chief technology officer of IBM Corp.'s 
federal group, the company announced Dec. 10.

Wells will coordinate a unified sales and services approach and focus on 
integrated federal software applications. He will guide efforts to 
revitalize government infrastructures using a combination of IBM's 
WebSphere, Lotus, Tivoli and Data Management products.

Wells, who once served as chief financial officer and chief technology 
officer for Alabama, has more than 35 years of experience in IT. Most 
recently, he was director of strategic transformations in IBM Software's 
Application Integration and Middleware Division, specializing in IT 
upgrades within the U.S. government's classified agencies.

***

Jim Leto has been appointed chief executive officer of project management 
consulting firm Robbins-Gioia Inc.

Leto formerly served as chairman and CEO of PRC, a $900 million science and 
technology firm. During his tenure, PRC achieved annual operating income 
growth of 40 percent.

John Gioia, founder of Robbins-Gioia, will continue to serve as chairman of 
the board. Avon James, who has served as president for three years, will 
remain in that job.
**************************
Government Computer News
TSA issues RFI on biometrics products
By Dipka Bhambhani

The Transportation Security Administration has released a request for 
information to all biometric technology vendors wishing to participate in 
the agency's test of biometric devices at 20 airports.

TSA plans to select one or two devices during the month from each vendor 
for its Airport Access Control Pilot Program. It is seeking "information on 
the technical capabilities, catalog price, implementation costs, and 
availability of equipment that is suitable for this application," the RFI 
said.

The pilot will focus on verifying the identities of airport and airline 
employees for access control. The devices will include facial, fingerprint, 
hand geometry, iris and voice recognition technologies. They will be tested 
at airport turnstiles, terminal doors to baggage areas and airline crew 
access points between terminals and aircraft.

TSA wants components, devices or systems that can be deployed in limited 
quantities within three months and devices that will work for full-scale 
deployment in nine months. The agency plans to release a request for 
proposals for systems integrators on the National Institutes of Health's 
Chief Information Officer Solutions & Partners 2 Innovations contract that 
will install and test the various biometric technologies for the pilot.

"The systems integrator will coordinate with vendors of selected equipment 
to install and test the equipment to determine the effectiveness of the 
devices with respect to the type of secured access control and airport 
category and environment," the RFI said.
*****************************
Government Computer News
Defense CIO approves next step in NMCI
By Dawn S. Onley

Defense CIO John Stenbit said today that he is satisfied with the progress 
of Navy-Marine Corps Intranet testing and will allow the Navy to move 
100,000 more seats to the NMCI environment.

Stenbit said the results of four months of testing demonstrated that NMCI 
was ready to move to the next level. He reviewed tests conducted by the 
Navy's Operational Test and Evaluation Force Command and the Fleet 
Industrial Warfare Center, the Army Information Systems Engineering 
Command, lead contractor Electronic Data Systems Corp., and the Institute 
for Defense Analysis, an independent agency hired by DOD to oversee Navy 
testing.

"We believe that an acceptable testing process has been implemented and the 
test results demonstrated that the NMCI" staff can identify problems and 
take steps to fix them, and implement improvements as the program evolves, 
Stenbit said in response to an e-mail message.

He said full certification of his findings would be released to the Navy 
within a week.
******************************
Government Computer News
Evans lays out CIO Council's goals
By Jason Miller

Over the next year, to improve how agencies and systems communicate, the 
CIO Council will consider publishing a governmentwide dictionary of IT 
terms and will develop standards for Extensible Markup Language data 
definitions. These are two of the six goals Karen Evans, the council's new 
vice chairwoman, laid out yesterday in a memo to agency CIOs.

The council elected Evans, the Energy Department CIO, last month. She takes 
over for James Flyzik, who retires today.

In the memo, Evans described her vision of where the council is heading and 
the priorities it will work on.

"As I see it, the Federal CIO Council stands today at a crossroad," she 
said. "Signs that the government as a whole has seen the importance of IT 
systems are all around. Together [with the Office of Management and 
Budget], we are teaming for results and working to drive IT management in 
government."

Along with governmentwide XML data standards and a set of common 
definitions, Evans said the council will work to guide agencies' use of 
enterprise architectures and develop interagency transaction standards. She 
said the council also will concentrate on IT work force training, 
especially project managers. Evans said the council will cooperate with OMB 
to formulate policy and work with agencies to implement those policies.
*****************************
Government Executive
December 17, 2002
Federal agencies slip slightly on customer satisfaction survey
By Amelia Gruber
agruber@xxxxxxxxxxx

The public's overall satisfaction with government services fell slightly 
from an all-time high last year, according to the latest American Customer 
Satisfaction Index, released Monday.


Federal agencies earned a score of 70.2 out of a possible 100 points in 
2002, down roughly 1.5 percent from last year's score of 71.3. Even though 
the overall score for satisfaction with government services fell, some 
agencies drew nearly even with private, nonmanufacturing companies. The 
average score for the public and private sectors combined rose from 72 to 
73.1 over last year.


The annual survey, conducted by the University of Michigan Business 
School's National Quality Research Center, measures customer satisfaction 
with seven economic sectors, 35 industries, 190 companies and federal and 
local government agencies. In 2002, the surveyors questioned 39 different 
groups of customers who receive government services. Of the 39, 17 groups 
participated in last year's survey and 22 were new additions.


This year, the survey included satisfaction scores for government Web sites 
for the first time. The government outpaced private companies in this 
category, earning an average of 74 points, versus 73.1 points for the 
private sector. Within the government, the Health and Human Services 
Department's Office of Women's Health received the highest score80 points.


Larry Freed, CEO and president of ForSee Results, one of several companies 
providing financial support for the survey, attributed the high 
satisfaction with government Web sites to their ability to reduce costs of 
communicating and to provide the public with access to consistent, 
high-quality information.


The slight drop in overall satisfaction with government services is largely 
because Medicare recipients and corporate tax filers were less pleased in 
2002, according to Claes Fornell, a professor at the University of Michigan 
Business School. Satisfaction with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid 
Services fell 3 percentage points, from a score of 79 in 2001 to a score of 
76 this year. And businesses filing taxes with the Internal Revenue Service 
were also less satisfied in 2002, contributing to a 9 percent decrease in 
the agency's score.


But survey analysts praised the IRS for improving satisfaction among 
individual tax filers. Satisfaction in this subgroup earned a score of 62, 
representing a 22 percent increase since 1999. "No organization, whether 
private or public, has shown a similar improvement in such a short period 
of time," Fornell wrote in an analysis of the survey.


The improved score is a tribute to the simplicity and efficiency of 
electronic filing, according to Fornell. The IRS scored a 78 with 
electronic filers, compared with a 53 from paper filers.


Of federal agencies participating in the survey, the U.S. Mint, which sells 
coins to collectors, received the highest satisfaction rating, even though 
its score dropped from 88 points last year to 84. Survey respondents also 
gave the Social Security Administration high marks. The agency received a 
score of 83 from retirement benefits recipients. The Veterans Health 
Administration, part of the Veterans Affairs Department, received 81 points 
from inpatients at VA medical centers.


Fornell also praised the Federal Aviation Administration for improvement 
"at a time when airlines are under significant security and financial 
pressures." The FAA's score rose 9 percent in the past year, from 59 points 
to 64 points. An effort to serve pilots better by presenting policies and 
regulations in clear, plain language, helped boost the score, according to 
Fornell.


In general, customers tended to rate regulatory agencies such as the Food 
and Drug Administrationwhich earned 67 pointslower than service-based 
agencies like SSA. Also, agencies need to focus on timely service delivery, 
according to Fornell. Overall, government agencies rated an average of 80 
points on professionalism, 82 points on courtesy and 73 points on timeliness.
********************************
Wired News
Bush Promotes Anti-Missile System

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Tuesday he will begin deploying a limited 
system to defend the nation against ballistic missiles by 2004.

Though the first parts of the system will be put into use while more 
advanced technology is still being developed, Secretary of Defense Donald 
Rumsfeld said it will likely stop "a relatively small number of incoming 
ballistic missiles, which is better than nothing."

As a candidate, Bush promised to build an anti-missile shield, and earlier 
this year he pulled out of an anti-ballistic missile treaty to advance the 
plan. Tuesday, he cited the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America as 
evidence that the country faces "unprecedented threats" and needs the 
anti-missile shield.

"When I came to office, I made a commitment to transform America's national 
security strategy and defense capabilities to meet the threats of the 21st 
century," Bush said in a prepared statement. "Today I am pleased to 
announce we will take another important step in countering these threats by 
beginning to field missile defense capabilities to protect the United 
States as well as our friends and allies."

He called the initial stage "modest," but said, "These capabilities will 
add to America's security and serve as a starting point for improved and 
expanded capabilities later as further progress is made in researching and 
developing missile defense technologies and in light of changes in the 
threat."

The plan calls for 10 ground-based interceptor missiles at Fort Greely, 
Alaska, by 2004 and an additional 10 interceptors by 2005 or 2006, defense 
officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Bush said the "initial capabilities" will also include sea-based 
interceptors and sensors based on land, at sea and in space.

Asked at a Pentagon press conference how he could be confident in fielding 
a system considering some recent failures in testing, Rumsfeld said, "most 
things don't just arrive fully developed."

"The way to think about the missile defense program is that ... it will 
evolve over time."

Rumsfeld used as an example the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, the spy 
plane that became a big asset in the war in Afghanistan, although it was 
still in testing. The Predator allowed troops to gather intelligence 
without endangering pilots, and ones fitted with missiles allowed the CIA 
to carry out attacks without endangering their agents.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, the likely next chairman of the House Armed Services 
Committee, lauded the decision to proceed on missile defense and said 
Congress would likely approve additional money. He said an extra $1.5 
billion would likely be needed over the next two years for the program that 
was budgeted for $7.8 billion in 2003.

"Today, the United States cannot stop a single ballistic missile headed for 
an American city," said Hunter (R-Calif.), who chairs the Armed Services 
subcommittee on military research and development. "The consequences of 
such an attack would be devastating, and the danger continues to grow as 
nations such as North Korea, Iraq and Iran continue to develop, purchase 
and sell advanced ballistic missile technologies."

But David Sirota, spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations 
Committee, questioned Bush's priorities.

"If George Bush thinks we are so flush with cash that we can afford 
billions to deploy a technology that might not even work, then why has he 
repeatedly rejected funding for basic security like border patrol, Coast 
Guard and immigration services that we know is desperately needed to 
prevent another September 11th?" he said.

Bush's announcement came six days after the latest test of the system 
failed when an interceptor rocket did not separate from its booster rocket 
and destroy a Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile as planned.

Three of eight tests of the interceptors have been judged failures by the 
military.

The initial Bush plan is more limited than the Strategic Defense Initiative 
envisioned by President Reagan in 1983 that came to be known as "Star Wars."

Still, Bush expanded the program significantly from the ground-based plan 
pursued by former President Clinton by also ordering research and testing 
on sea-based and space-based systems.

The Pentagon has begun conducting tests with short-range missile-defense 
systems that were prohibited by the ABM Treaty and has built and tested 
mobile and sea-based sensors to track missiles.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the missile defense timing had 
nothing to do with North Korea's recent admission that it had a secret 
program to enrich uranium to make nuclear weapons. But, he noted, Bush 
cited North Korea as a threat when he promised during his campaign to build 
an anti-missile safety net.

The United States has asked to use a radar complex in northern England as 
part of a global missile defense shield, the British government said 
Tuesday. American officials have also asked NATO member Denmark if it can 
upgrade a radar station at an American Air Force base in Greenland as part 
of the system.
***********************************
Wired News
Tech Sniffs Employee Offenders

NEW YORK -- There are no bodies, bones or blood to analyze. No pondering 
over a piece of decaying evidence that was once part of a human being.

But the forensics software on display at this year's Infosecurity 2002 
tradeshow is enough to spook corporate employees everywhere.

Computer forensics applications are typically used to investigate computer 
crimes and to preserve digital evidence so it's usable in court. But these 
applications aren't just for law enforcement officials anymore. Computer 
forensics software is helping stop corporate crime before it happens.

The software watches what employees do, and in some cases matches that 
usage data with employees' personal profiles to pick out the worker who is 
most likely to turn to a life of crime.

"There's a growing acknowledgement among executives that insiders can do 
more damage than the smartest outside hacker," said Nicholas Natella, a 
Manhattan systems administrator.

"And there's also a sense that if you don't protect information from 
insiders, the company could become embroiled in a really ugly lawsuit."

Some systems administrators at large companies said they are increasingly 
being asked to quietly collect digital evidence on difficult employees -- 
those who are in danger of being fired, or who have just been fired.

Companies are also employing snoopy software to make sure their employees 
aren't stockpiling corporate secrets.

Products like EnCase Enterprise Edition keep a wary eye out for both 
outside and inside attacks. EnCase scours the network to see if employees 
possess "unauthorized information" in order to help the company protect 
itself against fraud, legal problems and other issues.

Savvydata's RedAlert goes a step further, collecting, consolidating and 
analyzing internal and external employee information to determine an 
individual's threat to the organization. Savvydata claims RedAlert can 
predict which employee is most likely to be involved in malicious 
activities such as theft of sensitive information.

RedAlert 2.0 includes the company's newest security offering, Intelligent 
Information Dossier plus. IID+ is an optional subscription-based component 
that allows corporate IT folks to research employees' criminal histories, 
credit information, financial asset details, friends and associates.

That data can be combined with RedAlert's collection of internal data -- 
such as what files employees accessed, the contents of their e-mails and 
what company policies they violated -- to draw what Savvydata reps describe 
as a "clear picture that can be used in determining an employee's risk to 
your organization."

"RedAlert totally freaked me out," said Jeff Newhouse, a systems 
administrator for a Wall Street firm. "I understand why you'd need 
something like this if you are the CIA, but for standard biz use ... I just 
don't think I'd work at a company that used these sorts of tools."

"I figure companies are damned if they do and damned if they don't," said 
Nick Freson, a systems administrator from Brooklyn. "They get blamed if 
they don't audit their systems for employee fraud, and they get blamed if 
they do."

Not all the software on display is aimed at detecting employees who are 
running amok. Some of the applications being demonstrated are simply 
intended to make a computer forensics investigator's life easier.

WetStone Technologies is demonstrating NEXTWitness, a Web-based forensic 
data collection tool that captures, timestamps and then seals records of 
website content that can be used for digital evidence.

WetStone also demonstrated Time Lock Biometric, which uses fingerprint 
authentication to prove who authored a Microsoft Word document.
********************************
Reuters Internet Report
China Makes It Easier to Buy a .cn Web Site Name
Doug Young

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Relaxed rules for registering Web site names in China 
are likely to spark a surge in applications, including from foreign 
companies previously barred from using the .cn designation, China Internet 
watchers said.


New guidelines issued on Monday by the China Internet Network Information 
Center (CNNIC) should help to jump-start registrations of .cn names, which 
have been relatively anemic by global standards, experts said.


Since 1997, CNNIC has registered a scant 145,000 domain names ending with 
.cn -- miniscule compared with the 27.3 million .com, .org and .net 
addresses logged by leading U.S. domain registrar VeriSign


"They would like to see more registration not only by Chinese companies, 
but also by foreign companies," said a Beijing-based Internet expert who 
did not want his name used. "CNNIC also sees a commercial value in this. If 
the number of registrations increases, they will get more money."


Under the new guidelines, government-run CNNIC has designated about two 
dozen private companies to act as registrars for Internet domain names 
ending in the .cn suffix assigned to China. CNNIC previously handled all 
such registrations itself.


In another key change, foreign companies with no China presence will now be 
allowed to apply for .cn domains. That move will pave the way for firms 
like U.S.-based search engine Google (news - external web site) to operate 
China-specific sites with .cn designations even if they have no China offices.


TOP LEVEL DOMAIN


CNNIC will also allow .cn to be used as a "top level" domain, meaning Web 
sites can use .cn as the sole suffix in their address.


Previously, the .cn suffix had to be preceded by another standardized 
suffix indicating the nature of the site, such as .com for businesses or 
.org for non-profit organizations. Thus a company that previously had to 
use the name Widget.com.cn will now be allowed to use simply Widget.cn.


The expert in Beijing said there was no connection between the moves and 
China's censorship of the Internet, which recently extended to a temporary 
block on access to Google and another search engine, AltaVista.

Among the two dozen companies that will be allowed to register .cn 
addresses, only one, NeuStar of the United States, is based outside China. 
Its selection is designed specifically to draw more foreign companies, 
China Internet watchers said.


In its own announcement of the alliance with CNNIC, NeuStar said on its Web 
site it will target small- and medium-sized businesses seeking to establish 
a presence in the China market.


Among the Chinese companies that will soon accept registrations, 
U.S.-listed Sohu.com anticipates the business will provide a meaningful new 
revenue source, said spokeswoman Caroline Straathof.


"We think this is a good business opportunity," she said. "It's good for 
the consumers as well because they will have much more choice in selecting 
their domain names."


Changhua Qiu, a U.S.-based analyst with boutique investment advisor Forun 
Technology, said companies like Sohu.com will only receive limited revenues 
from the liberalized policy.


"Short-term there may be more registration of many names," he said. "But 
that's not a long-term growth business."
*****************************
Reuters Internet Reports
Malaysia Arrests Three Over Terror Rumors on Net

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Three Malaysians have been arrested under a 
security law allowing detention without trial for spreading rumors on the 
Internet that Kuala Lumpur was a target for terror bombings, police said 
Wednesday.


The two men and a woman, aged between 22 and 40, had bulk-forwarded an 
email that said several places in Kuala Lumpur, including the Petronas Twin 
Towers, were on a hit list for attacks to be carried out in the 
mid-December, police said.


"It's nothing but rubbish," a senior police official in Kuala Lumpur told 
Reuters.


"We're going to try and arrest as many as possible who were responsible for 
sending this thing out," he said, adding the email seemed to have been 
forwarded to dozens of people over the past two weeks.


The email, written by someone identified only as Jeremy, said the 
Philippine National Defense Department had received information the attacks 
would take place in tourist spots, malls and nightspots frequented by 
Westerners in Kuala Lumpur.


It accused the Malaysian government of trying to cover up the information 
and encouraged recipients of the email to forward it to as many people as 
they could.


One of those recipients was an official at the Australian High Commission, 
which lodged a police report through one of its staff Saturday, leading to 
the arrests.


The three, picked up in the capital and its outskirts between Tuesday and 
Wednesday.


They are being held under the Internal Security Act, which is normally used 
against political dissidents accused of threatening the stability of the 
nation and those accused of trying to overthrow the government.


The ISA empowers police to hold anyone without trial for 60 days initially 
and thereafter for renewable periods of two years.

The government says its policy of pre-emptive arrests has stopped Malaysia 
suffering the same kind of terror attacks that have occurred in neighboring 
Indonesia and the Philippines.
******************************
MSNBC
Web surfers vulnerable to Flash flaw
Flaw in Web animation software could be exploited
By Robert Lemos

Dec. 17  A flaw found in Macromedia's animation software leaves Web surfers 
vulnerable to attack when they visit an Internet site or, possibly, open an 
e-mail, a security firm said Tuesday. The vulnerability, found by security 
firm eEye Digital Security, allows an attacker to create a hand-edited 
Macromedia Flash, or SWF, file that can compromise a PC or Macintosh if its 
user views the file with the Shockwave Flash Player plug-in for Internet 
Explorer, Netscape or other browsers.

       THE FLAW'S DANGER is compounded by the fact that Flash is so 
widespread and the software doesn't have a built-in upgrade system, said 
Marc Maiffret, chief hacking officer for Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based eEye.
       "Almost every user is going to have Flash, so they can become 
compromised," Maiffret said. "Unless the user is smart enough to get the 
latest version of Flash, then they are going to be vulnerable."
      More than 90 percent of Web browsers have the Flash software 
installed, according to Macromedia. While nearly 53 percent of Web surfers 
use the latest version, Shockwave Flash Player 6, the number still falls 
well short of the total, underscoring the problem of convincing people to 
upgrade.
       Macromedia warned its developers of the problem last Friday, said 
Troy Evans, product manager for the Flash Player. He added that the only 
way to notify software users that they need to get the latest software is 
via new versions of Flash animations, so the company is focused on getting 
developers to do more updates.
     Although getting users to upgrade is a challenge, Evans said, the 
company has been fairly successful. "We have 3 million downloads per day, 
so the players that are out there are getting updated," he said.
       The flaw affects the Flash plug-in for browsers on Windows, Unix, 
Linux and the Macintosh.
       By editing the header of a Flash file, an attacker can cause the 
file to execute commands and compromise the computer system. In some cases, 
it's possible to cause HTML e-mail to perform a similar attack, eEye said 
in its advisory.
       The danger of flaws that require a victim to go to a specific Web 
site tends to be offset by the fact that a Web site can be shut down fairly 
quickly. For that reason, a virus that attempts to use a vulnerability in 
Flash or another Web technology usually has a limited effect.
     In many respects, the flaw resembles another vulnerability that eEye 
found in the Flash Player in August. That flaw also allowed an attacker to 
modify the header of an SWF file and cause the Flash Player to compromise 
the machine on which the software was running.
       "The outcome of the attack is basically identical to the one back 
in August," Maiffret said. "It just goes to further show that the average 
software company is in great need of real-world security" checking.
*****************************
MSNBC
Pentagon announces data project
By Pete Williams
NBC NEWS
Dec. 17   It is a classic dilemma for a society that thrives on the right 
of privacy: How do you balance those rights with the need to protect 
against a future terrorist attack? The Pentagon has a major project under 
study, headed by a controversial figure from the past, that digs deeply 
into the personal activities of individual Americans  and a good deal of 
the early work is going to private contractors. Is this a classic example 
of government going too far?

      COULD IT BE possible to prevent another Sept. 11-style attack by 
studying the steps terrorists have taken in the past and developing 
computer systems to flag similar behavior and alert law enforcement? The 
Pentagon is trying to develop technology to do just that.
       "This is an important research project to determine the feasibility 
of using certain transactions and events to discover and respond to 
terrorists before they act," said Undersecretary of Defense Pete Aldridge 
on Nov. 20.
       The project is the work of the new Information Awareness Office. 
The mission is to see if it's possible to gather data on such things as 
visas for entering foreigners, car rentals, airline ticket purchases, new 
drivers licenses, records of gun buys, purchases of certain chemicals, even 
fertilizers that can be used to make bombs, enrollment at flight schools 
and police arrest records.
       All of that information would then be fed to powerful computers to 
look for patterns that could suggest a potential terrorist plot in the making.
      But civil liberties groups find the project alarming, from the man 
put in charge  John Poindexter, a central figure in the Iran-Contra 
scandal  to the idea that the government could track the personal actions 
of millions of Americans every day. Tuesday, a public interest group 
accused the Pentagon of farming out too much of the research to contractors.
       "There's questions about what kind of oversight is there when 
private companies are involved to this extent in the research," said Bill 
Allison of the Center for the Public Interest. "In a sense, it's 
outsourcing Big Brother."
       The Pentagon says it's only researching whether such a thing could 
be done. The actual gathering of data, it says, would be turned over to law 
enforcement.
       Defenders of the idea say smaller versions of the same technology 
already help credit card companies spot stolen cards. And a legal 
commentator says fears of such a system are overblown.
       "The government is trying to develop ways of screening huge masses 
of data to look for patterns that might tip them off in advance to the next 
Mohammed Atta, before he kills thousands of us, because it might save 
thousands of lives," said Stuart Taylor of the National Journal.
       For now, the project's biggest problem isn't criticism. It's 
whether such a massive undertaking, trying to analyze billions of 
transactions a day, could actually work.
******************************
CNN
Student gets A for hacking school computer
By Jeordan Legon

(CNN) -- It was a breeze for 15-year-old Reid Ellison to hack into his high 
school's computer grading system. But what to do once he broke in took a 
bit more ingenuity.

You see, Reid already has a perfect 4.0 grade point average at Anzar High 
School in San Juan Bautista, California. So to leave his mark, he decided 
to lower his grades to a 1.9 GPA -- a meager D+.

"I couldn't do what most people would want to do when they hack into the 
school's computer," Reid said. "So I thought it would be funny to do the 
opposite."

The hacking project, which was sanctioned by the school, left 
administrators so impressed they gave him a perfect score. The school is 
now working on fixing the security holes.

"I'm helping them with it," said Reid, who's been tinkering with computers 
since he was in second grade and wants to be an engineer. "I basically came 
up with three pages to improve the security of the network in general."

Getting the password

Reid's project was part of Anzar's "exhibition" requirement. To graduate, 
each student must complete six exhibitions -- written and oral 
presentations in history, science, math and language arts.

It took three hacking programs less than a second -- 200 milliseconds to be 
exact -- to find the password to the school's computer, Reid said. It was 
the school secretary's name: Silvia.

The school has since changed the password and Reid doesn't know it, but 
that doesn't stop the jokes from students asking their classmate for 
hacking help.

"If he didn't have such high moral fiber, he could probably make a lot of 
money off his abilities," said Wayne Norton, Reid's adviser.

Getting perfect grades back
Reid, who skipped part of the eighth grade, said he's setting his sights on 
college, not hacking. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology or the 
California Institute of Technology to be exact.

After his hacking session was documented, Reid kept a close eye on the 
return of his hard-earned A's.

"I made sure it was really easy for them to change it back," he said.

*******************************
Euromedia.net
New EU guidelines for e-health websites
18/12/2002

The European Commission has released a new set of quality criteria for 
websites providing health information to EU citizens.

The initiative is part of a response to the rapid growth of e-health 
services across Europe, with health-related websites - now estimated to 
number over 100,000 - currently ranking among the most popular destinations 
on the internet. The Commission is planning that the core set of principles 
will be adopted either as a European standard or form the basis for 
localised schemes within Member States, such as voluntary codes of conduct, 
trustmarks or accreditation systems.

According to the Commission, national and regional health authorities, 
relevant professional associations and private medical website owners are 
now expected to implement the criteria in a manner "appropriate to their 
website and consumers."

The standards have been developed following a pan-European consultation and 
are based on a broad consensus among healthcare specialists, government
departments, international organisations and website users.

The over-arching principle is that a health-related website must state 
clearly its target audience and take care to "ensure that both the style 
and nature of the information, and its presentation, are appropriate for 
the chosen audience".

Six key criteria, together with sub-criteria have been outlined by the 
Commission, which address specific quality issues particular to 
health-related content and also site development and maintenance. The 
top-level criteria, designed to be applicable irrespective of the type of 
information or the audience being addressed, are identified as: 
transparency and honesty; authority - requiring content providers to state 
their credentials; privacy and data protection; updating of information; 
accountability (setting out editorial policy and addressing responsible
partnerships) and accessibility.

In line with EU enlargement goals, a similar initiative is being undertaken 
covering health-related websites in the 10 EU candidate countries.
******************************
Sydney Morning Herald
Web consortium releases accessibility standards
By Jenny Sinclair
December 18 2002

The top Internet standards group has released a new set of rules for 
writing accessible software.

Today's release of the "UAAG 1.0" standard by the World Wide Web Consortium 
(WC3) completes a set of standards aimed at making Web sites easier to use 
for people with disabilities.

The new standard applies to software developers, and covers accessibility 
of the user interface, rendering of accessibility information, and user 
choice in configuring browsers and media players, according to a WC3 release.

These guidelines also address interoperability of mainstream browsers and 
multimedia players used by people with disabilities to assist their Web 
access.

Many of the features of the standard are already widely used, but WC3 
endorsement means developers will be able to refer to a common set of rules.
Leading US disability groups and software developers have endorsed the 
latest release.

The guidelines can be found at www.w3.org/TR/2002/REC-UAAG10-20021217/
***************************
Sydney Morning Herald
Big rise in sites using scripting languages: survey
December 18 2002

The number of Web sites making some use of a scripting language has risen 
by over half, according to the latest Netcraft survey.

The monthly survey looks at Web Server software usage on Internet connected 
computers. In the December survey responses were received from 35,543,105 
sites.

Netcraft said both PHP and ASP, the two most widely used scripting 
languages, had seen significant increases in deployment, as businesses 
constructed more sophisticated sites.

In percentage terms, the fastest growing scripting language on the Web 
during 2002 was JavaServer Pages. The number of IP addresses using JSP on 
their front page has roughly trebled in 2002, albeit from a small base of a 
little over 10,000 last December.
The survey found that around one percent of sites using ASP.Net were 
Linux-based.

The survey said the number of active sites had risen by around 17 percent 
over the last year, indicating that the conventional Web was still growing. 
The number of sites using SSL had grown by about 14 percent.

During 2002 the survey found that the Net had grown more geographically 
disparate. A significant reduction of 5.3 million hostnames in the US was 
compensated by an increase of 4.1 million hosts in Europe and the 
Asia-Pacific.

It said hosting facilities in the rest of the world had caught up with 
those in the US, with a net repatriation of sites from the US to almost 
every well developed overseas economy.
******************************
Broadband News
FCC Adopts Measure to Maintain Universal Service Fund

The FCC adopted a number of measures to support the universal service fund 
(USF), which subsidizes telecommunication services for rural areas, 
low-income households and public schools and libraries. According to the 
FCC, several market and technology trends have been undermining the 
viability of the USF contribution system, including increased availability 
of service bundles of combined local and long-distance calling. Consumer 
substitution of wireless and Internet telephony for traditional voice 
service also undermines the systems. The new FCC measures include:

Increasing from 15 to 28.5% the current interim safe harbor that allows 
wireless carriers to assume their revenues are interstate.
Basing USF contributions on projected, collected end-user interstate 
revenues, instead of the current historical, gross-billed revenues
Prohibiting carriers from including a mark-up above their USF contribution 
if they choose to recover their contributions costs through a phone bill 
line item.
Under previous rules, carriers' contributions to the USF were assessed as a 
percentage of their interstate and international end-user revenues. 
Wireline long distance companies contribute 63% of the universal service 
fund, while local exchange carriers and wireless carriers make up the rest.
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-229485A1.pdf
FCC, 13-Dec-02


In July 2002, the FCC received a recommendation that no new services should 
be added or removed from the definition of services supported by "universal 
service." The main issue under discussion had been whether advanced or 
high-speed services should be included within the list of core services 
supported by a federal universal service fund. A Federal-State Joint Board 
on Universal Service, which was composed of three state regulatory 
commissioners and three FCC commissioners, found that no new service 
satisfies the statutory criteria of the Communications Act of 1934. The 
Board concluded that the public interest would not be served by expanding 
the scope of universal service at this time. The Board reasoned that 
high-speed service is not "essential" to consumers because online resources 
are available by voice telephone, dial-up connections and in public 
libraries and schools. Moreover, a substantial majority of consumers so far 
have chosen not to subscribe to high-speed services where they are 
available. The Board further cited a heavy federal financial burden to 
include high-speed access as part of universal service, especially in rural 
areas. An expansion of universal service would also violate the principle 
of competitive technology neutrality (DSL vs. cable). However, the Board 
was split on the issue of equal access of fundamental telecommunication 
services to all Americans.
********************************
Computerworld
Patent Office starts testing paperless processing system
By LUCAS MEARIAN
DECEMBER 16, 2002

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last week began testing an 
all-electronic patent and trademark-processing system that's expected to 
cost the agency more than $50 million to develop and is scheduled be fully 
implemented by late 2004.
The patent office, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, 
estimated that the system will generate an annual return on investment of 
30% during the first five years of use, due partly to technology upgrades 
aimed at eliminating more than a half-million paper files each year.

Last spring, the agency said it planned to be able to process all trademark 
applications electronically by next October and to have a similar process 
in place for patent filings a year later (see story). But it didn't 
disclose details about the technology it will use to support the paperless 
processing.

CIO Doug Bourgeois last week said the patent office had started running the 
system in pilot mode to process requests for patents related to the arts. 
The test phase is due to continue until March, he said. If all goes 
according to plan, production deployment will begin next June.

The Patent and Trademark Office plans to use IBM's WebSphere MQ middleware 
tools as an enterprise application integration hub, which will use XML to 
connect new document-scanning and archiving software to the agency's 
back-end processing system, Bourgeois said.

Applications for patents and trademarks will be sent to the integration 
hub, which will convert the data into a format that can be understood by 
the homegrown back-end system. That system was originally developed for a 
Unisys Corp. mainframe and was migrated to five Hewlett-Packard Co. Unix 
servers last year.

The document-scanning system is a modified version of an application called 
ePhoenix, which was developed by the European Patent Office in Munich, 
Germany. The software runs on an Oracle9i database and will be used to 
capture images of patent and trademark applications as well as follow-up 
communications and filings, Bourgeois said.

"We'll have an image of every piece of paper we receive," he said. The data 
will be indexed, and Bourgeois noted that ePhoenix includes workflow 
capabilities that can route filings to the next person in the 
application-processing chain.

Room to Grow

To help deal with the increased amount of data that it will be collecting, 
the Patent and Trademark Office is installing an additional 90TB of 
Symmetrix disk arrays from EMC Corp. on top of the 210TB it already has 
configured on a storage-area network. Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC plans to 
announce the new purchase this week.

The migration to full electronic processing will make the agency's data 
backup and disaster recovery capabilities more important than they are now, 
Bourgeois said. The patent office currently has a stand-alone data center 
and does only tape backups of its mission-critical data. If systems were to 
crash, it would take "a long time to get back to business," Bourgeois said.

Bob Cote, a patent litigator and trial lawyer at Orrick, Herrington & 
Sutcliffe LLP in New York, said a paperless system for processing patent 
applications is long overdue. For external users, the new technology should 
reduce the time it takes to submit filings, make it easier to access data 
and reduce errors in application processing, Cote said.
**********************************

Lillie Coney
Public Policy Coordinator
U.S. Association for Computing Machinery
Suite 510
2120 L Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20037
202-478-6124
lillie.coney@xxxxxxx


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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:

Welcome to the November 27, 2002 edition of ACM TechNews,
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ACM TechNews
Volume 4, Number 428
Date: November 27, 2002

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Top Stories for Wednesday, November 27, 2002:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Loss of Major Hub Cities Could Cripple Internet, Study Suggests"
"Court Finds Limits to California Jurisdiction in Cyberspace"
"China Tries to Woo Its Tech Talent Back Home"
"TeraGrid Supercomputing Project Expands"
"Volunteers Wanted for IT National Guard"
"Students Learning to Evade Moves to Protect Media Files"
"Bush Signs Homeland Security Bill"
"MIT Cooks Up Wired Kitchen Tools"
"Tough Microbes Offer Clues to Self-Assembling Nano-Structures"
"Free Software vs. Goliaths"
"Free-software Gadfly Takes on Net Group"
"San Diego Supercomputer Center Hits Data-Transfer Speed Milestone"
"Way Back When"
"Experts Mull 'Next Big Thing' in Computing"
"Software Innovation Without End"
"Throttled at Birth"
"Global Positioning System: A High-Tech Success"

******************* News Stories ***********************

"Loss of Major Hub Cities Could Cripple Internet, Study Suggests"
The centralized "hub-and-spoke" model of the Internet's
infrastructure makes it especially fragile in the event of a
terrorist attack or other catastrophe that threatens to knock out
major Internet nodes, according to an Ohio State University study ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item1

"Court Finds Limits to California Jurisdiction in Cyberspace"
A Monday ruling from the California Supreme Court, in which the
justices determined that merely posting content online does not
give companies the right to sue out-of-state defendants for
copyright infringement in California courts, is considered a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item2

"China Tries to Woo Its Tech Talent Back Home"
The Chinese government is ramping up efforts to win back its
engineering and technology students who had gone to the United
States to study but stayed to do business.  Chinese consul
general Wang Yunxiang in San Francisco says jobs for returning ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item3

"TeraGrid Supercomputing Project Expands"
The National Science Foundation, which apportioned $53 million
last year to fund the construction of the Distributed Terascale
Facility (TeraGrid), has authorized an additional grant of $35
million to extend the facility to include different kinds of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item4

"Volunteers Wanted for IT National Guard"
As part of the Department of Homeland Security initiative, the
federal government will put out a call for volunteers to serve in
the National Emergency Technology (NET) Guard, a taskforce of
science and technology experts that will quickly mobilize to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item5

"Students Learning to Evade Moves to Protect Media Files"
In response to warnings from entertainment companies about
students downloading copyrighted material off the Internet
without authorization, as well as the cost of such
activities' bandwidth demands, U.S. colleges are attempting to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item6

"Bush Signs Homeland Security Bill"
Bush signed the Department of Homeland Security bill into law on
Monday, thus authorizing the consolidation of 22 federal agencies
into a single body tasked with protecting the nation's critical
infrastructure.  The law has civil liberties groups worried about ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item7

"MIT Cooks Up Wired Kitchen Tools"
Since 1998, MIT's Media Lab has been the center of an effort to
develop sophisticated electronic kitchen products, the foremost
being the Minerva interactive countertop, which combines cameras,
scales, and computers to assist chefs in food preparation.  Using ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item8

"Tough Microbes Offer Clues to Self-Assembling Nano-Structures"
NASA biologist Jonathan Trent has proposed that a hardy
extremophile organism's resistance to high temperatures could be
exploited to produce self-assembling arrays of tiny structures,
which forms the basis of nanotechnology.  The microbe in ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item9

"Free Software vs. Goliaths"
The nonprofit Free Software Foundation faces some formidable
adversaries in its struggle to support the open-source software
movement, including politicians, copyright holders, and
commercial software companies.  These organizations and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item10

"Free-software Gadfly Takes on Net Group"
Open-source advocate and Linux pioneer Bruce Perens is working to
change the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF) policy of
including proprietary code in its specifications.  Because the
IETF's current membership is against such a change, Perens is ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item11

"San Diego Supercomputer Center Hits Data-Transfer Speed Milestone"
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of
California, San Diego, achieved a data transfer speed of 828 Mbps
when moving data from its tape drives to disk drives,
demonstrating the type of massive storage capabilities needed for ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item12

"Way Back When"
Paul Marks is the inventor of the Wayback Machine, an access
point for an online archive of roughly 2 billion Web pages that
currently takes up more than 100 terabytes (TB).  His Alexa
Internet commercial Web site cataloging business is funding the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item13

"Experts Mull 'Next Big Thing' in Computing"
Leaders of the IT industry discussed future computing trends in a
Comdex panel entitled "The Next Big Thing."  The panel focused on
wireless, security, and display technology while presenting a
vision of a world full of networks.  In the future, content would ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item14

"Software Innovation Without End"
Computer visionary and inventor Alan Kay, a Palo Alto Research
Center principal whose many credits include the standard PC
interface, the highly influential Smalltalk programming language,
network client/servers, and the Ethernet, is joining ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item15

"Throttled at Birth"
Matthew Williamson, a researcher at Hewlett-Packard laboratories
in Bristol, England, has devised a way to slow the spread of a
computer virus, and it appears to work.  Williamson's "throttle"
method limits the rate at which computers can connect to new ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item16

"Global Positioning System: A High-Tech Success"
The Global Positioning System (GPS), which started out as a U.S.
military project to improve navigational accuracy, has evolved
into a tool that can be used by civilians as well, and has many
potential applications.  The system consists of 24 satellites ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1127w.html#item17


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Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber:

Welcome to the December 2, 2002 edition of ACM TechNews,
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ACM TechNews
Volume 4, Number 429
Date: December 2, 2002

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Site Sponsored by Hewlett Packard Company ( <http://www.hp.com> )
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Top Stories for Monday, December 2, 2002:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Black Market For Software Is Sidestepping Export Controls"
"Hollywood, Tech Become Wary Partners Against Piracy"
"Listening to the Internet Reveals Best Connections"
"Total Info System Totally Touchy"
"Fishing for Data"
"From Darwin to Internet at the Speed of Light"
"Don't Write Off Existing IT Skills"
"Biology May Help Shrink Electronic Components at NASA"
"DARPA Looks to Quantum Future"
"The Rogue DNS Phenomenon"
"Purdue Panel Maps Safer Wireless World for United Nations"
"Future Security"
"Coding with Life's Code"
"Seething over Spam"
"The Making of a Policy Gadfly"
"Software Doesn't Work. Customers Are in Revolt. Here's the Plan."

******************* News Stories ***********************

"Black Market For Software Is Sidestepping Export Controls"
Export restrictions are in place to bar the sale of scientific
and engineering software to rogue nations such as Iraq or North
Korea, but such countries can acquire these technologies easily
through a black market.  Worse, clamping down on this market is ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item1

"Hollywood, Tech Become Wary Partners Against Piracy"
Executives of entertainment companies hope that partnerships with
technology companies will better their chances of curtailing the
digital piracy of music and movies, and are making efforts to
overcome long-term animosity between the two sectors.  Fox Group ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item2

"Listening to the Internet Reveals Best Connections"
Chris Chafe of Stanford University's Center for Computer Research
in Music and Acoustics has developed a way to check the quality
of Internet connections by converting latency variations into a
musical format.  The conventional method of assessing an Internet ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item3

"Total Info System Totally Touchy"
The Total Information Awareness System proposed by the Pentagon's
Office of Information Awareness will require new database mining
technologies that leave many in the industry unsettled.  The
project, which has received $137 million in funding for 2003, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item4

"Fishing for Data"
As the amount of digitized information created continues to
increase, ways of extracting needed data are struggling to keep
up.  Meanwhile, researchers are also working on ways to
accommodate wireless computing technologies, such as a project at ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item5

"From Darwin to Internet at the Speed of Light"
The European Space Agency (ESA) is pursuing integrated optics
technology as a way to detect Earth-like planets through the
Darwin project and the ESA/ESO Ground-based European Nullifying
Interferometer Experiment (GENIE); such research could also be ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item6

"Don't Write Off Existing IT Skills"
New research published in vnunet.com's sister publication
Computing concludes that demand for basic IT skills still
exists, but many professionals are in danger of devaluing
them and casting them aside too quickly because of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item7

"Biology May Help Shrink Electronic Components at NASA"
Researchers at NASA's Ames Research Center are working to
construct electronics that are many times smaller than current
components using proteins that are genetically manipulated to
self-assemble into nanoscale structures.  Principal project ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item8

"DARPA Looks to Quantum Future"
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is
using its High Performance Computing Systems (HPCS)
program as a vehicle for making progress on quantum computing.
DARPA has asked five vendors (include Cray, Hewlett-Packard, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item9

"The Rogue DNS Phenomenon"
ICANN's cancellation of elections for ICANN board seats was
unpopular among Internet users, most of whom do not realize that
there are alternatives to dealing with ICANN.  ICANN governs the
servers that transform domain names like various .com names into ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item10

"Purdue Panel Maps Safer Wireless World for United Nations"
Addressing the security of wireless networks is critical,
especially for developing countries hoping to enter the
Information Age without taxing their limited financial resources,
according to a report that Purdue University's 2002 Wireless ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item11

"Future Security"
Software vendors know that the market is overcrowded with
information security products, while enterprise customers are
clamoring for applications that are designed for security up front
and that offer real-time system monitoring and rapid response to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item12

"Coding with Life's Code"
Various projects in the emergent field of DNA computing--which
postulates that biological processes are defined by computational
algorithms--are testing whether DNA molecules can carry out
computations and can be applied to the design of nanotechnology, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item13

"Seething over Spam"
There is a diverse array of tools and services on the market
designed to block junk email, or spam, thus saving companies
money and improving productivity.  Joyce Graff of Gartner
recommends that small- and medium-sized businesses outsource spam ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item14

"The Making of a Policy Gadfly"
Princeton University computer scientist Edward W. Felten is part
of a growing number of academic researchers who are opposed to
legislation that seeks to regulate digital technology, a move
that reportedly threatens important scientific research and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item15

"Software Doesn't Work. Customers Are in Revolt. Here's the Plan."
Software developers are striving to make software compatible amid
customers refusing to invest in more products because they have
yet to realize returns on existing systems, which are often
non-interoperable and result in added implementation costs--for ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2002-4/1202m.html#item16


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